for two sets of bunk beds along one wall. The wall does not presently exist because a new room is being added to the cabin; in its place is a canvas sheet. On the opposite wall there is a closet and a small bathroom. There are four chests of drawers, two stacked on the other two. The double-decker dressers block the closet. For entertainment we have a battery-operated phonograph and three albums. By the end of the summer I despise every song.
There is a small kitchen that is never used. Instead we eat nearly every meal at the North Rim Inn. We are issued discount cards that entitle us to breakfast for $.50, lunch for $.75, and dinner (except steak) for $1.00. When we work outside the Area, we order box lunches from the Inn at the same discounted price. A rookie smokechaser at pay grade GS-3 makes $2.05 per hour, so it is possible to eat very well on little more than one hour’s pay. We occupy a table at the Inn; the SWFFs take one also, and so do the maintenance crews and the rangers. After dinner we all sit around the table and BS. Everyone has a pipe. I do not smoke, but it becomes apparent that a pipe is mandatory, so I get one and chew on the stem determinedly. We talk about work and money; about girls and parties at the Lodge; about the Park Service and our bosses. We talk about the fire crew.
There are endless discussions about life in the “old days,” generally last year or the year before. A fire crew turns over rapidly. Rare is the seasonal who stays with fire for four summers. Crew traditions are oral, incessantly refashioned, and made ancient by the brevity of seasonal life. In the old days the fire crew ruled the North Rim. They were crazy and hardworking and had lots of fires. They restrung the Fence clad only in hard hats, Jockey shorts, and boots. They cut fireline faster than the Forest Service fire plow. They were living legends. “Call me Shane,” one insisted when he first arrived, so they did. He spent most of his free time on a motorcycle. Drunk, he drove the whole fire crew to the Lodge on his cycle. There was brawny Tim, reckless and roguish, an inventor of rough sport and censor of fire crew morals—which meant, in perverse inversion, that he oversaw a certain level of “corruption.” Tim organized endless parties with girls from the Lodge, Inn, or campground. Above all, there was Reusch. Reusch had been district ranger for a decade, had weathered the Saddle Mountain Burn, and had passed his rough benediction over the fire crew. Reusch was built like a grizzly. One night he picked up Tim, who had the bulk of a tree stump, and placed him on the fireplace mantel. Reusch, it is said, constructed W-6 fireroad while en route to a fire, driving a Jeep with one hand and swinging an ax with the other. He pampered and ruthlessly worked the fire crews, invited them to his house for drinking and general hell-raising. After the Saddle Mountain fire, Reusch made it a policy not to pay for overtime unless his crews found a fire. In disgust, Tim and Shane located a snag with a catface, started a fire in the basal cavity, and extinguished it. We found a fire and we put it out, they solemnly swore.
Now, of course, the new regime is less colorful and less sensitive to fire crew needs. The cautious Chuck has replaced the reckless Reusch, and I have replaced Tim. Chuck’s manifold fire credentials are dismissed. The crewmembers blink with incredulity when they learn that Tim and I attended the same high school in Phoenix.
They are determined to corrupt me. There is hope. I carry a pipe, though I have yet to smoke it. I drink a beer from time to time. I have learned to use simple swear words, not in fluent fire crew idiom but as a halting, second language. But I do not party. Gummer finally proposes that we organize a “book party.” The Ape reluctantly agrees. We each find a book and go to the Lodge. For half an hour or so we variously read or, more commonly, prowl restlessly around the Lodge. The book party is a failure. Books will not substitute for girls. My initiation becomes a matter of some importance. It will not be easily solved, but there have been stubborn rookies before: Gummer got his nickname because Tim thought he acted like a bubble-gummer. There is hope; there will be fires.
The crew is cutting and splitting wood on Lindbergh Hill when the smoke report comes in. North Rim tower sites the fire just south of the Sublime Road “in a grove of aspen.” The Ape and I depart immediately. We exit the Sublime Road at W-2 and, with pack and tools, begin walking. We walk for an hour. No smoke. Ape radios the tower and asks if he still sees smoke. “Yes,” Rick replies. “It is in a small grove of aspen.” “Christ!” mutters Ape. “Does he know how many fuckin’ groves of fuckin’ aspen there are on the North Rim?” We walk for another hour. It rained last night, and the sky remains largely overcast. It is difficult to spot smoke against that kind of backdrop. We climb another hill. The spruce branches are still wet; we brush against them as we trudge, loaded like pack mules, through the woods, and we both are soaked. At last we stop. Something bounces off Ape’s hard hat. He picks up a piece of charcoal. Some more charcoal falls nearby. We stare at each other and look up. Immediately there is a thunderous crack; awkward in our firepacks, we stagger as fast as we can away from the noise, while the top of a large fir crashes to the ground. It is the lost smoke.
The Ape grins. The tree has broken far below where it has been burning. The entire burning section is now on the ground. Ape tells me to dig a fireline. He hacks off branches with a pulaski, then stacks the green branches on the quiescent flames. The smoke thickens. He radios North Rim tower that we have arrived at the fire. I complete the line, and Ape continues to pile on more branches. The fire, which was nearly out, now flares and smokes heavily. North Rim tower calls to ask if there is a problem. The Park fire officer, Clyde, asks if we need an air tanker, some slurry, some advice. “No,” says The Ape. “We’re holding our own.” The fire rushes through the branches in sudden, gulping flames and sends up dense pockets of black-and-white smoke. The Ape lights his pipe. “Good fuckin’ work,” he says to me. Clyde has personally gone to Hopi tower to observe the smoke column puffing malignantly from the North Rim. He can have an air tanker up in minutes, he reminds us. It is now after 1700 hours, the start of overtime.
The Ape decides we should eat. In digging for my C rations, I unearth a bag of marshmallows. The Ape sees it and goes bananas. “It’s just a gag,” I explain. He insists that we cut some sticks. He squeezes a marshmallow down the point, locates a bed of red coals, and turns his hard hat around. We are just browning up the first batch when we hear a voice.
Rick trudges past our last flag. He is carrying a coffeepot, has carried it all the way from North Rim tower along our flagging. “After that fire flared up, I thought you boys could use some help,” he explains. “Thanks,” we say. “We’re doing just fine. Would you like a marshmallow?” Blankly, alternately staring at the smoking log and the pot, Rick shakes his head no. The fire has nearly expired; the large wood is much too wet to sustain combustion; only the oily branches, carefully prepared, could torch. We begin serious mop-up. It does not take long. Before he leaves we ask Rick to take a picture of our marshmallow toast. Trying to juggle coffeepot and camera, he quietly obliges.
When I return in early June the next summer, Ape asks me how the winter went.
I am driving the red powerwagon to the Inn. School had gone OK, but for months all I had thought about was the North Rim. For an instant I am caught between polysyllables and swearing and can’t say anything. “At least you learned to drive,” The Ape shouts. “Christ, you were fuckin’ awful.” “Yeah,” I say lamely, glancing out the open window. “It’s great to be back.”
But it doesn’t matter what I say or how I say it. The wind gusts, and my words vanish in its thundering rush through the pines.
Part Two
TOURS OF DUTY
CHAPTER ONE
The Area
COME EARLY.
When you stand at Little Park, it does not matter how far, or for how long, or for what reasons you have been away. Everything outside the North Rim vanishes instantly. The cold air shakes you awake; your skin feels as if it has plunged into a mountain stream; lungs ache for breath
